Representatives from Connected Schools and Teach a Man to Fish visit UNESCO-UNEVOC

On Tuesday 17 September 2013, Mr Pascal Mabille (France), Head of Connected Schools, and Mr Nik Kafka (United Kingdom), Managing Director of Teach a Man to Fish, visited the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre in Bonn, Germany. This meeting was organized to explore possibilities of cooperation regarding the development of a platform that would provide free access to Open Educational Multimedia Resources mainly for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) teachers.

Mr Shyamal Majumdar, Head of UNESCO-UNEVOC welcomed the representatives and had a brief discussion on UNEVOC’s strategies for enhancing the use of technologies in TVET and the potential for the three parties to cooperate. On behalf of UNESCO-UNEVOC, Mr Max Ehlers with Ms Kenneth Barrientos, engaged in a planning workshop on potential short-term and long-term project approaches for establishing a database of free and open Multimedia Resources for TVET Teachers that can be created, shared, used and re-used across the combined networks of UNESCO-UNEVOC, Connected Schools, Teach a Man to Fish and beyond.

After the discussion, Mr Mabille and Mr Kafka elaborated the work of their organizations in the presence of all UNEVOC Staff to explore possibilities for enhanced cooperation and knowledge-sharing.

‘Teach a Man to Fish’ is an NGO founded in 2006 in London by Nik Kafka. Its mission is to encourage and support education projects that generate sustainable livelihoods for young people across the developing world.

‘Connected Schools’ is an NGO based in France which aims to facilitate vocational training and professional integration of disadvantaged children by enabling their teachers to run courses of the best national level.

The three organizations are getting together as a follow up to the virtual conference on ICT in TVET held in May 2013, hosted by the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre and moderated by Mr Kafka. Based on the reflections drawn from the conference, it had become evident that there is a dearth of free and useful teaching and learning resources specific to vocational education and skill development that are open and available for teachers. This lack is a serious barrier to accessing TVET programmes for all and for integrating the use of ICT in skill development and TVET effectively.

The organizations are also connected through the Paraguayan UNEVOC Centre, Fundacion Paraguay, which itself is a self-sufficient school.